How to keep your carpets stain free
Picture this, you’ve just bought your first property and you have had Hudson Flooring fit all of the carpets and luxury rugs in your new home. In the first week your dog treks mud through the whole house and you’ve spilt a glass of red wine in the living room. The last thing you are going to want to do is to spend a lot of money on a professional carpet cleaner immediately .
Not only do we want to provide you with the best looking carpets, but we also want to help you to keep them looking their best. For that reason we have created this guide with tips and tricks you can do at home to remove even the nastiest of carpet stains and keep your carpets looking as good as new. The most important thing to remember is to act quickly; the longer you wait before trying to remove a stain, the more time it has to seep into the carpet fibres and leave a permanent mark.
The infamous blotting method
I’m sure you have all heard it before but you should never try to rub a fresh stain out of the carpet. Rubbing a stain will most likely just push the stain further into the carpet fibres causing the stain to become worse. If you scrub the stain you run the risk of damaging the carpet fibres and a leaving a prominent fluffy mark.
The best option is to blot carpet stains with a clean cloth or a paper towel, starting from the outside and working your way into the centre of the stain as to not make the spot any bigger. Rinse your cloth thoroughly with water and repeat until the stain has been removed.
Having said this, there are four stains that you should never blot with water:
- Pollen
- Ink
- Mud
- Oil
Dealing with muddy footprints
With the UK’s unpredictable weather you need to always be prepared for mud being trekked into your home. So we’ve got some tips for you to follow to ensure a clean end result. The first thing that you should do is remove any of the larger clumps of mud or dirt that may have been left behind. You may be tempted now to try and clean up the stain, however what you need to do is go and make a cup of tea while the mud dries and hardens. Once the mud is completely dry you need to vacuum up as much as you can. Remember to vacuum slowly; if you go too fast you will just spread the dirt around the carpet. Once all of the excess mud and dirt has been removed the last step is to clean the area with some cleaning solution. If you do not have any store-bought cleaning products then you can easily make your own using a mixture of vinegar and cold water. Simply spray the area and follow the blotting method as outlined above.
Prevention is best
This may sound like an obvious one but taking extra care to limit the amount of dirt that your carpets are exposed to. Enforcing a shoes-off rule will greatly extend the lifetime of your carpets. It is important to hoover regularly even when there are no visible stains, especially high traffic areas. Experts say that these high traffic areas should be hoovered twice a week. If loose dirt is left on the carpet for prolonged periods of time, it gets pushed deeper into the carpet’s’ fibres and can wear it down.
Health benefits
Aside from the aesthetic reasons for keeping your carpets clean, there are also a myriad of health benefits to this. There are a number of allergic reactions that can be brought on and intensified by dirty carpets. Maintaining clean carpets will eliminate any trapped pollutants, clear out any dust mite infestations and prevent any future growth of mould. Reducing the effects of these are important in keeping a healthy household; it will also reduce the amount of toxic gases that can be produced and stored in your home’s carpeting.